There is one point that I would like to make which is independent of any particular process or foundation. That is, I would like to address the issue of why foundations are useful at all.

Github rocks. I totally get it. For the people working on a project, it is just about perfect. It is a great environment for people to collaborate on a codebase and Get Shit Done. At Eclipse we aspire to hosting a really good forge and community, but we're not under the illusion that we compete with github's greatness.

But foundations are not just for the people producing the code. They exist to balance the interests of the producers of that code, and the consumers who want to adopt it in their products or enterprises. All of the processes that you see at organizations like Eclipse and Apache exist to balance those interests. One of those interests that is particularly vital is vendor neutrality. In this day and age, if you want your project to aspire to becoming an industry platform, you need to demonstrate your project's independence from vendor control, and openness to outside contribution. Other key interests include IP management, project longevity, and the like. Organizations like Eclipse and Apache exist to ensure that their projects meet those criteria.

There are certainly counter-examples (Spring comes to mind), but in general hosting a project at a foundation makes it more likely that your code will reach its maximum mainstream adoption.